Abstract: In this article we develop a conceptual framework that examines the relationship between shared mental models, task interdependence, and virtual team performance. In addition, we use media synchronicity theory to examine how various attributes of the technologies used by virtual teams to communicate can influence the development of shared mental models. Finally, we employ a sense-making lens to explore in more detail how features inherent to different communication technologies influence the development of shared mental models. Our goal is that through examining these relationships, some of the mixed findings in prior virtual team research may be better explained.

Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between communication and team effectiveness within the context of global virtual teams, arguing that a range of communication methods may impact upon the team’s effectiveness. To explore this relationship empirically, we present a key informant insights based on the activities deployed by a participant in a global team. The paper reports on the team’s effectiveness, their communication strategies and the team’s psychological traits: trust, shared understanding and co-operation. Findings from the pattern matching analysis indicate that the limited range of communication methods available to a global virtual team was not a major contributing factor to a team’s effectiveness. The paper offers communication/management techniques that could be beneficial to the global virtual team leader in facilitating team effectiveness, highlighting some issues surrounding the level of dispersion within teams that could be further explored in future research.

Abstract: Purpose – Virtual teams are becoming a norm in current knowledge-based society and offer a wide range of organizational benefits. This paper aims to investigate the effects of leaders’ motivating language (ML) and feedback approach on virtual team members’ creativity performance. Design/methodology/approach – A 2×2 with pre-test and post-test experimental design was employed to explore how to stimulate virtual team members’ creativity performance using a group decision support system. Findings – The results show that leaders’ ML and feedback approach via e-mail instructions have different interaction effects on members’ creativity and idea generation performance. Team members receiving direction-giving instructions generate more ideas under the demanding feedback approach and team member receiving instructions with more empathetic language exhibit higher creativity performance under the encouraging feedback approach. Research limitations/implications – Shortcomings of virtual environment and leadership re...

Abstract: Inherent in the focal article of Lord and Dinh (2014) is the idea that for leadership context matters. Who is seen as a leader, how effective a leader is perceived to be, and how effective a leader actually is are all questions whose answers vary by the context in which leadership is taking place. One context that has become particularly vital is that of the virtual team, a team that has members who potentially span different organizations, time zones, geographic locations, and cultures with technology enabling communication and coordination between members (Huang, Kahai, & Jestice, 2010). Virtuality is a related concept, which is the degree to which a team exhibits those characteristics (Gibson & Gibbs, 2006). A study by MCIWorldcom (2001) found that for companies with 500 or more employees, 61% of employees reporting having been on a virtual team now or at some time in the past. A study in 2008, meanwhile, projected an 80% usage of virtual teams by companies with over 10,000 employees (i4cp, 2008). Virtual teams are a major part of how work is done in the world.

Abstract: Purpose – The research on virtual team leadership does well to describe the skills that are needed to guide and direct effective teams. However, what is presupposed in the previous research is that virtual teams have assigned leaders. That is, leaders were either management, appointed by management or were chosen by the team itself. Yet in today's global economy not all virtual teams have assigned leaders, instead many virtual team leaders emerge on their own to direct the group's actions. The purpose of this paper is to examine which emergent leadership competencies most impact virtual team effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach – This is a mixed method study where both a participant survey and content analysis of actual participant messages are used to determine the competencies of emergent virtual team leaders. The research participants for the current study were required to work in assigned teams on organizational case analyses. At the end of each case, teams presented their solutions in the form ...

Abstract: Contents: A.P. Brief, J.P. Walsh, Series Foreword. Part I:Introduction to Leading and Managing People in the Dynamic Organization. E.A. Mannix, R.S. Peterson, Introduction: Leading and Managing People in the Dynamic Organization. L. Dyer, R. Shafer, Dynamic Organizations: Achieving Marketplace and Organizational Agility With People. Part II:Managing the People in the Dynamic Organization. D.B. Smith, M.W. Dickson, Staffing the Dynamic Organization: Rethinking Selection and Motivation in the Context of Continuous Change. R. Wageman, Virtual Processes: Implications for Coaching the Virtual Team. A. Boisnier, J. Chatman, The Role of Subcultures in Agile Organizations. Part III:Managing Information Flow in the Dynamic Organization. M.C. Thomas-Hunt, K.W. Phillips, Managing Teams in the Dynamic Organization: The Effects of Revolving Membership and Changing Task Demands on Expertise and Status in Groups. R.L. Moreland, L. Argote, Transactive Memory in Dynamic Organizations. K.M. O'Connor, W.L. Adair, Integrative Interests? Building a Bridge Between Negotiation Research and the Dynamic Organization. Part IV:Leadership in the Dynamic Organization. P.V. Hodgson, R.P. White, Leadership, Learning, Ambiguity, and Uncertainty and Their Significance to Dynamic Organizations. R.G. McGrath, M. Boisot, Real Options Reasoning and the Dynamic Organization: Strategic Insights From the Biological Analogy. N. Anand, B.C. Jones, Organization Design: A Network View. Part V:Conclusions. R.S. Peterson, A.C. Sancovich, Emerging Themes From a New Paradigm.

Abstract: This article explores some of the challenges faced when managing virtual teams, in particular the role played by trust and identity in virtual teams. It outlines why teams and virtual teams have become a valuable part of the modern organization and presents ten short case studies that illustrate the range of activities in which virtual teams can be found. Following this, the article examines some of the common problems encountered in virtual team working. It discusses two broad classes of solutions. The first are solutions that are essentially technical in nature (i.e., where changes to or improvements in technology would help to solve or ameliorate the problem); the second are more organizationally based (i.e., where the root of the problem is in people and how they are managed). The article concludes that both the technical and the organizational solutions need to be considered in parallel if an attempt to build an effective virtual team is to be successful.

Abstract: Instant messaging is one of the most popular communication technologies in virtual teams, enabling interactions to intertwine whole working days, thus creating the sense of copresence for team members who are geographically dispersed. Through close linguistic analyses of naturally occurring data from a virtual team, this article discusses the implications of two novel communicative situations enabled by instant messaging: presence information and the persistence of transcript. The preliminary findings of this study indicate that these new communicative situations require the flouting or rethinking of previously existing interactional norms and that communicative practices employed by the team members are not yet conventionalized/normalized, the expectations and interpretations of interactional rituals and timing vary highly, even within the same virtual team.

Abstract: Much prior research on virtual teams has examined the impact of the features and capabilities of different communication tools (the nature of communication) on team performance. In this paper, we examine how the social structures (i.e., genre rules) that emerge around different communication tools (the nurture of communication) can be as important in influencing performance. During habitual use situations, team members enact genre rules associated with communication tools without conscious thought via automaticity. These genre rules influence how teams interact and ultimately how well they perform. We conducted an experimental study to examine the impact of different genre rules that have developed for two communication tools: instant messenger and discussion forum. Our results show that in habitual use situations, these tools triggered different genre rules with different behaviors, which in turn resulted in significantly different decision quality. We used heightened time pressure as a discrepant event to interrupt the automatic enactment of habitual genre rules and found that users adopted similar behaviors for both tools, which resulted in no significant differences in decision quality. These findings suggest that the automatic enactment of genre rules for a communication tool may have as powerful an effect on behavior and performance as the actual features of the tool itself. We believe that our results, taken together with past research showing the effects of social structures on communication, call for the expansion of task-technology fit theories to include the role of social structures in explaining the use of and performance from communication tools.

Abstract: Health care organizations have yet to appreciate the unique challenges associated with leading virtual teams. Nurse leaders are faced with managing some aspect of virtual teams that require a new way of leading. Nursing leadership will need to integrate and leverage technology to meet the growing demands of the health care industry. Guiding principles can help nurse leaders effectively guide their organizations in a virtual environment. It is important for e-leaders to create a social presence and build trusting relationships with all members of the virtual team.

Abstract: Virtual teams are commonly formed in all industries and in a variety of areas. How the members adapt to the team culture when participating in a virtual team and how the adaptation affects communication quality and facilitates interpersonal trust within the team are important issues of coordination among the diverse members of a team. Thus, this study proposed a model using human- and technology-related factors to explain the phenomenon. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed. After the case study approach, academic and practical perspectives were both taken into consideration. The results of quantitative analysis revealed that both cultural adaptation and interpersonal trust have positive effects on the performance of virtual teams. A significantly negative effect was found between communication quality and performance of virtual teams, which is inconsistent with the viewpoint of traditional teams. Finally, academic and practical implications were also provided.

Abstract: In a global business environment, marketing education must support students to develop cross-cultural agility and adeptness with an aim to enhance their employability. This article contributes with an experiential cross-cultural exercise that enables students to develop new enterprises in collaboration with other students in a different country through virtual teamwork. The exercise exposes students to practical cross-cultural learning, enterprise development, and virtual team management. Results from students’ reflection journals indicate that the exercise is enjoyable, builds confidence in a range of skills, and prepares students for future employment. We offer guidance and direction on how to design and execute this experiential cross-cultural exercise and also highlight the challenges faced and strategies for success.

Abstract: Problem Statement By providing immersive, three dimensional environments where users can meet and communicate through avatars, or their graphical and fully customizable online alter egos, virtual worlds can replicate face-to-face meetings (Davis, Murphy, Owens, Khazanchi, & Zigurs, 2009; Schultze & Leahy, 2009). Unfortunately, minimal research exists into the application of virtual worlds on virtual project teams for real project management success (Davis, et al., 2009; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2009). This is a concern because virtual worlds present a paradox: they can mimic face-to-face communications to restore the visual cues that foster trust (Cowell & Cowell, 2009; Davis, et al., 2009) but their avatars' identities may diverge from their owners', thus potentially undermining that trust (Galanxhi & Nah, 2007; Wolfendale, 2007). Since virtual team members may never physically meet, it is unclear how this will affect virtual team member trust and project success when avatars are used for project communication. Research Questions The researcher addressed these research questions: 1. When the goal is real project success, what impact will communication using avatars have on team trust? If the impact is negative, how might it be improved? If the impact is positive, why? 2. When the goal is real project success, will certain types of avatar personas have more or less effect on the establishment of team trust and why? Will specific personas have more effect, less effect or a neutral effect on team trust? Review of Literature Economic considerations drive companies to distribute project work to places where skills can be procured at lowest cost. However, business best practices confirm co-locating project teams promotes success (The Project Management Institute, 2004). IT industry trends reinforce this comment. For example, with its short development sprints, intense scrums of developers, and story and backlog management, the Agile development method requires tight, fluid relationships between developers and users and was designed for co-located teams (Nottonson & DeLong, 2008). The Agile development method is gaining acceptance because it helps organizations absorb change so it is not surprising offshore vendors have adapted their processes to fit the approach. Unfortunately, implementing Agile in distributed settings requires overhead that saps the responsiveness for which it was designed. For instance, Sureshchandra and Shrinivasavadhani (2008) described a process for distributed software development using Agile. Despite their assurances that such arrangements become easier to manage over time, the contrast between the overhead required to implement the Agile development method on distributed teams and the lack of overhead required when applying it on co-located teams is striking. Virtual worlds are poised to ease this tension between the pull to co-locate and the push to decentralize project teams by providing a vehicle for simulated co-location. This literature review explores this tension. It covers massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs) and virtual world research, business and project management, virtual meetings, virtual simulations, virtual social spaces, avatars, trust and identity. MMORPG and Virtual World Research, Business and Project Management Virtual world research started with an emphasis on gaming and evolved to consider virtual worlds. Therefore, any assessment of the research literature must consider these two focus areas. MMORPGs and virtual worlds share the same architecture (Alterbosch, Pierce, & Simmons, 2008; Kumar et al., 2008). They differ only in their development approaches, with MMORPGs employing proprietary models and virtual worlds employing open source models (Arakji & Lang, 2007). Since they share the same foundation, findings discovered in one genre are transferrable to the other. …

Abstract: the nature of managing team work has changed significantly because of changes in organizations and the nature of the work they do. Organizations have become more distributed across geography and across industries. Relationships between people inside an organization and those previously considered outside (customers, suppliers, managers of collaborating organizations, other stakeholders) are becoming more important. Organizations have discovered the value of collaborative work. When implementing IT projects in a global environment, a popular strategy is the establishment of virtual teams. The objective of this paper is to examine what competence an IT project manager has to have to lead a virtual IT team successfully. The question is approached from the perspective of competences presented in the IPMA (International Project Management Association) competence baseline, or The Eye of Competences. Results from research, as well as a survey conducted, highlighted that both soft and hard skills are needed for the optimal IT project manager to lead a virtual team. To be successful in this area it is not sufficient to be outstanding in technical competences. Soft skills like communication, teamwork and leadership are no less essential. The competences scoring highest in the survey were: clarity of objectives, leadership & project management, communication, reliability & efficiency, teamwork and quality management.

Abstract: Virtuality in organizations has usually been treated as a characteristic that is observed either at a team or organizational level. However, the penetration of new technologies into our lives has transformed the entire design of organizations and teams. Not only has the design of teams and organizations changed, but the context and design of our jobs have also been impacted. Today, even employees in traditional team settings use electronic communication tools to work with multiple dispersed contacts outside of their teams and organizations, such as colleagues, clients or suppliers, who do not share the same geographical location. With all of these changes, virtuality can no longer be considered as a concept that is exclusive to virtual team members. In today’s organizations, to some extent, everyone’s tasks involve non-face-to-face contacts, irrespective of team virtuality. It therefore becomes crucial to identify the task virtuality phenomenon in organizations. With this paper, the example of Yahoo! is used as a case study to illustrate how task virtuality can be relevant for the design of organizations. Additionally, the proposed two-dimensional framework integrates both team virtuality and task virtuality elements in organizations. This framework is novel in that it not only allows us how to conceptualize the task virtuality, but also provides practical guidance for managers to identify and understand the factors leading to high task virtuality and to deal with the resulting complexities.

Abstract: Organizations are currently facing important and unprecedented challenges in an ever dynamic, constantly changing and complex environment Groups of individuals working across time, space and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology, commonly referred to as virtual team, have become a 'norm' in order to cater to the needs of global market places Thus, it becomes essential to understand those factors that impact some of the key team related measures like efficiency, effectiveness and productivity of this evolved team setting This paper presents a conceptual model and develops testable propositions highlighting factors that affect team performance in globally distributed setting The research focus of this paper is on the impact of diversity, distributedness and task characteristics on team performance in distributed settings Analysis plan and directions for future research are also discussed in the paper

Abstract: Thearticle aims to show why and how trust and its components of are importantwithin organizational context. Trust in virtual teams is a rathernew and little studied field. Explicitunderstandings of what is a virtual team together with which dimensions definesuch team are provided. Afterwards, the article discuss what specificchallenges virtual teams face when attempting to establish trust between itsmembers providing knowledge on what actions and behaviors can build trust in avirtual team and overcome the challenges specific to virtual teams. Due tocertain virtual teams’ specifics (geographic dispersion, electronic dependence,dynamic structure and cultural diversity) trust in these teams is usually low. Basedon the empirical research results methods for building trust in the virtualteam are suggested. KEY WORDS: trust,virtual team,trust building in a virtual team. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.15181/rfds.v10i2.138

Abstract: Purpose – The paper aims to address the question, “What is the impact of web-based video via webcams on virtual team trust and effectiveness?” Change and evolution in team perceptions over time are described. The result is the creation of a theoretical model describing the effect of webcams on virtual team development. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative phenomenological heuristic case study was used to explore the individual expectations and experiences of the team members over a six-week period. To strengthen reliability and validity, two qualitative methods, content analysis and constant comparative analysis — a means of grounded theory, were used to both test the historic basis of the existing literature on trust and effectiveness in virtual teams and to explore how the use of webcams influenced the work, interactions and effectiveness of a virtual team. Both qualitative methods involved different pairs of researchers using inter-rater coefficients to address coding reliability and validity. Results from the two methods were then compared and contrasted. Findings – The resulting model highlights the importance of ongoing, formal differentiated training on new technology. This research also suggests careful management of technology change and its deployment to enhance outcomes of various organization forms. Research limitations/implications – Given the nature of the qualitative study, the findings are not generalizable, but may illumine the understanding of webcams and technology adaptation in similar virtual teams. Practical implications – The resulting model highlights the importance of ongoing, formal differentiated training on new technology. This research also suggests careful management of technology change and its deployment to enhance outcomes of various organization forms. The study incorporates Technology Acceptance Theory and applications of the Kirton Adaptation-Innovation Inventory. Originality/value – With the increase in bandwidth on the Internet, technologies such as webcams have become more viable for use in virtual teams.

Abstract: Global Software Development (GSD) is an emerging paradigm in which development teams are geographically distributed throughout different countries whilst working on the same projects. Lower costs, greater access to a skilled workforce, the leveraging of time-zone effectiveness and a closer proximity to the market are some of the proven advantages that have contributed to this recent expansion. However, GSD also entails certain drawbacks caused mainly by distance and socio-cultural differences. Traditional face-to-face meetings are no longer common, thus making communication, coordination and collaboration more complex. Moreover, interactions frequently involve members who use non-native languages and whose customs and behavior may be misinterpreted. Companies consequently require their workforce to have a balanced set of socio-technical skills more than ever before. Students and practitioners therefore need to acquire not only new technical skills, but also the ability to collaborate and interact effectively in a variety of geographic, cultural and linguistic settings. This kind of training is not currently common and companies often complain about their new recruits? lack of preparation in GSD related skills. However, companies do not always have the resources to provide these kinds of training programs, as the teaching of this kind of skills requires appropriate tools, methods and course materials. Moreover, training these skills is not easy at universities since it necessitates providing trainees with real experiences that it may be difficult to reproduce. Some universities organize joint courses through collaboration with distant universities so that students can benefit from a wide set of knowledge and experiences, but the coordination problems of these approaches make them hard to apply. One way in which to avoid the problems outlined above, i.e., a lack of resources, coordination complexities, and poor levels of realism, is by using simulation, which has been used in various areas of Software Engineering training such as project management. However, although simulation has the potential to enable independent and controlled training, no significant proposals exist in the field of GSD training. The research question that guides this work is therefore: ?How can we model a GSD educational framework that replicates real-world settings?? This thesis presents a framework (VENTURE) for interactive GSD training which is based on simulation. The framework simulates real world interactions that occur in GSD which are appropriate for use in both industrial and academic settings. In order to simulate GSD settings, trainees take on a specific role and interact with Virtual Agents, characterized by a specific culture. A special kind of Virtual Agent, called a Virtual Guide, directs the trainees and provides feedback when they interact in an inappropriate manner. These training scenarios take place by means of a chat simulator for synchronous communication training and through an email simulator for asynchronous communication training. The feedback provided by the Virtual Guide is automatically used to assess the trainees? performance in real time following a defined assessment method. The courses are provided via an e-learning environment that allows students to access the training sessions at any time. Moreover, a scenario designer has been implemented to support the design of new simulated interactions. New simulations will build on predefined GSD problems, including cultural and linguistic rules that represent typical interaction challenges in real settings. In order to design GSD scenarios, realistic low-level GSD problems that arise during the day-to-day work are required. However, accessing these problems or scenarios is difficult, mainly because companies are not always willing to share their knowledge and experience. In order to tackle this challenge, the framework additionally considers a Web based knowledgebase of GSD patterns and scenarios. The GSD community can, through this open social network, share their experiences, problems and scenarios in an organized manner. Simulations may therefore be designed by applying the data collected in this collaborative knowledgebase. The VENTURE framework was created by following a mixed methodology that combines both qualitative and quantitative methods. An initial systematic literature review on GSD served to focus the topic on the field of GSD education, after which a second systematic literature review was conducted in the field of GSD education. Having studied the problems of the existing educational methods, a prototype of the framework was built and evaluated by experts, leading to a first version of the framework. The principal components of VENTURE (the chat simulator and the scenario designer) were then evaluated by a group of experts. These experts in GSD and e-learning examined the design and executed a brief training simulation in order to analyze the tool?s potential to provide GSD training, along with the tool?s usability. The results of the survey, which were analyzed by means of a thematic analysis procedure, were mainly positive. Both evaluations served to confirm that VENTURE has the potential to fill the gap in GSD virtual team training. Moreover, indications on where improvements could be made served to develop a new version of the framework. A Field Study of the new version of the framework was conducted in order to evaluate whether learning was achieved after participation on a real GSD course based on two training simulations. This evaluation involved potential users of the framework (students, trainers, researchers) interacting with VENTURE and completing two training scenarios. A rigorous evaluation of the user experience was conducted using qualitative and quantitative data collection. Several questionnaires (including pre and post questionnaires) were administered at different stages of the process and the interactions were also tracked for reasons of analysis in order to uncover any significant differences after the simulation process took place. The results revealed that participants, after going through the evaluation process, acquired new knowledge and capabilities that would allow them to perform better in GSD settings. The participants also agreed that they were satisfied with both the learning outcomes and the user experience. This thesis provides two main contributions: the first of these is a training framework designed to take advantage of Virtual Agents in order to design accurate simulations of GSD interactions. Part of this training framework is also to automatically assess the student?s progress. An invention disclosure has been produced, and commercialization activities are currently being addressed with regard to this contribution. The second contribution is the introduction of a new pattern model with which to acquire real world GSD problems that can be used with pedagogical purposes. Future work will consider the population of the GSD pattern based knowledgebase, along with improvements that could allow a more intelligent interaction of the Virtual Agents and facilitate the design of the simulations.

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to extend the knowledge about virtual teams and above all to stress the differences between face-to-face and virtual teams as well as to define its chosen success factors. This paper is based on an extended literature review of virtual teams. The author describes virtual teams, reasons for their implementation and four factors that are prerequisites for team success.

Abstract: Software packages evaluation and selection is one of the most important activities encountered by software as a service (SaaS) users in the high performance networked computing environment, especially for the small or medium-sized enterprises. In this paper, we propose a framework for SaaS software packages evaluation and selection by combining the virtual team (VT) and the BOCR (benefits, opportunities, costs, and risks) of the analytic network process (ANP). Different from the traditional application of the BOCR model of ANP, the proposed VT-BOCR model attempts to solve the complex ANP model and overloaded pairwise comparisons by decomposing the tasks to four parts, and performed by benefits virtual team (B-VT), opportunities virtual team (O-VT), costs virtual team (C-VT), and risks virtual team (R-VT) separately. The interactive networked media on distributed environments not only makes the proposed framework possible without the limitations of time, space, and human resources, but also can take full advantage of the talent experts who are geographically dispersed. The proposed framework also shows great potentials for aiding practitioners and researchers concerned with the cloud services.

Abstract: New technologies and high user adoption rates are pushing developers of social and educational tools to unprecedented productivity rates. When a teacher plans to employ these new tools and technologies, he/she will find an abundance of uses and design options. This has resulted in the teacher’s design task becoming increasingly complex.

Abstract: Based on a broader, inductive study of twenty-nine managers leading thirty five virtual teams in the Swiss Information Technology (IT) industry. This chapter explores how managers are currently leading virtual teams, what types of communication technologies they use in order to manage their teams, and what constitutes effective virtual team management. Managers leading virtual teams cannot see their subordinates; they cannot drop by informally to build rapport, assess situations, gather valuable information, provide support and mentorship, or resolve conflicts. The chapter provides short reviews of implicit theories, behavioral theories, and behavioral complexity theories of leadership. The managers' statements about their beliefs about virtual leadership and the managerial practices they use were coded using an inductive and theoretical approach. In contrast, managers with narrow Virtual Leadership Portfolios (VLPs) use fewer communication technologies of different types. Managers with broad virtual leadership portfolios are more likely to lead high-virtuality, high-performing virtual teams than managers with narrow virtual leadership portfolios.

Abstract: How does a team use a computer-mediated technology to share and reuse knowledge when the team is inter-organizational and virtual, when the team must compete for the attention of team members with collocated teams, and when the task is the creation of a completely new innovation? From a review of the literature on knowledge sharing and reuse using collaborative tools, three propositions are generated about the likely behavior of the team in using the collaborative tool and reusing the knowledge put in the knowledge repository. A multi-method longitudinal research study of this design team was conducted over their ten-month design effort. Both qualitative and quantitative data were obtained. Results indicated that the propositions from the literature were insufficient to explain the behavior of the team. We found that ambiguity of the task does not determine use of a collaborative tool; that tool use does not increase with experience; and that knowledge that is perceived as transient (whether it really is transient or not) is unlikely to be referenced properly for later search and retrieval. Implications for practice and theory are discussed.

Abstract: In this study, we examine how organizations can “set the stage” for virtual teams at their formation in order to promote development of knowledge sharing—a critical process for virtual team effecti...